Connor laughed. “I see.”

Aidan hit the foot of a steep set of poorly lit stairs and started up them. “Watch your step… Listen, if you must know, vamps have a lot of downtime, given the whole longevity thing. Boredom sets in, but thanks to modern technology there are so many wonders to fill in the gaps. The Internet, movies, podcasts, television… especially television. We’re big on television… and movies. Anyway, Brandon takes his name from one of his favorite shows from the nineties. You ever watch Beverly Hills, 90210?”

“This is worse than I thought,” I said. “We’re dealing with the Prince of Darkness and he takes his name from Brandon Walsh? Please tell me this television thing is not a recurring theme with you people cuz if I have to parlay with Count Richie Cunningham, I may have to seek out psychological help.”

Aidan shook his head. “No, it’s not,” he said, stopping at the top of the stairs. We were on a ten-foot landing that led to a thick wooden door that ran from floor to ceiling. Aidan looked at my bat, then at me. I felt his eyes working some kind of influence over me and I fought to stop it. “You really ought to consider putting that thing away.”

“Why?” I said, doing my best to resist following his command. Even so, I felt myself lowering my arm.

“Because the man behind this door?” he said. “He’s not like the rest of those downstairs. He’s older than them all, which would more than qualify him to lead, but on top of that, he’s got the best head on his shoulders. Him, I listen to. Him, I would die for.”

14

Aidan knocked and then pushed the enormous door open like it weighed nothing, but I doubt I would have been able to move it by myself. The wooden planks of the door were thick and looked like they’d take a week to get through using an ax. Aidan walked into the dark room beyond it. Connor followed him through, and the second he cleared past Aidan, he broke into a sprint.

I came into the room. Brandon’s chambers were ancient and sprawling, a mix of cold stonework filled with treasures both ancient and modern. Off in the darkness, a distant screen glowed at the far end of the room, which was lit by a fireplace. Several figures were seated by it, and that was where Connor headed. I ran after him. As we neared the circle of chairs, a man with shoulder-length wavy black hair stood. From the way the other figures remained seated, it was clear he was the alpha male. Brandon.

Connor leapt at him, pulling a wooden stake out from one of his sleeves.

“You did this to him?” Connor shouted. Twenty years of rage, loss, and sorrow was bubbling to the surface in an instant. “You made him this?”

Brandon did not look at all like what I pictured. He was tall but looked a bit like his television-show namesake, only with longer hair and a bit more hip in the clothes department. He wore dark jeans and a brown long-sleeved button-down with an Ed Hardyish swirly print on it, but I didn’t have time to figure out what it was. He blurred out of Connor’s direct path, but Connor-seasoned as he was-must have caught something in his movement and compensated. My partner swerved right and raised his hand with the stake in it. The blur of motion connected with it and there was the tearing sound of fabric. Brandon slowed to human speed, checked the tear in his shirt near his chest, and knocked the wooden stake from Connor’s hand. It slid off across the floor.

The rest of the vampires leapt to their feet, their faces pulling back like taut leather as they popped their fangs, their true monster natures revealed. Their wave of emotion engulfed me and I stumbled backward, the sense of their projected fear overwhelming me. Brandon waved his hand, and the mob transformed back into their more human forms as the intense feeling subsided. For the moment the bloodsuckers were at bay, but who knew how long that would last?

“Forgive me,” Brandon said. His voice wasn’t what I would have expected from the lord vampire of the manor. In fact, he sounded like he might have a little West Coast in him, maybe due to his television-viewing habits. It helped put me a bit at ease. Brandon turned to Aidan. “And you are interrupting my council… why now?”

“This is the one I kept having the dreams about,” Aidan said, pointing to Connor.

Connor stepped forward. “What the hell is going on here? For almost two years this city has been vampire free. Now I find that not only are there vampires in town; they’ve got their own Medieval Times castle built inside some high-rise.”

Brandon went to speak, then stopped as he noticed Connor’s similarity to Aidan for the first time. His eyes widened as he looked back and forth between the two of them. Aidan, on the other hand, still just looked confused.

“Aidan, my dear boy,” Brandon said. “Will you excuse us for a moment?”

Aidan fell into the prototypical teenage sulking pose, shoulders forward, hunched over. “But…”

“Now,” Brandon snapped. Aidan looked a little shocked, straightened up, and gave a quick nod before blurring off across the room, letting the heavy oak doors slam shut behind him. Brandon turned his attention to both Connor and me. “I realize the nature of this situation must be hitting the two of you somewhat hard,” Brandon continued. He reached out, snatched my bat from my hand, and collapsed it down before handing it back to me. “I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you to insult me in my own home. Do you really think I’d allow you into my chambers if I thought you could do me any serious harm?”

Connor looked off to the far end of the room where the wooden stake had slid away. “It was worth a shot,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I doubt any sort of surprise attack would have worked.” Brandon smiled, turning his full attention to Connor. “You see, we’ve been expecting you.”

“Me?” Connor asked. “Excuse me?”

“We’ve been expecting you,” Brandon repeated. “More or less. It’s why we took Aidan in the first place. We believe you have a role to play in our future, Connor.”

Connor got right up in Brandon’s face. He looked ready to explode. “Yeah, right. Maybe you don’t understand it, but I’ve spent half my life thinking my brother was dead.”

Brandon’s face was impassive. “An unfortunate circumstance, I agree, but given our reasons for doing so, the conversion of one human into our kind is a small price to pay for the safety of my people.”

Connor was becoming more and more unhinged by the second, but I couldn’t let that happen. We’d be dead with that kind of raw emotional reaction.

“Easy,” I said, stepping between Connor and the head of the vampires.

“Got anything pointy on you, Simon?” Connor asked. “I’m not asking you to do the deed. I’m just asking what you’re packing.”

“Maybe we should let this all sink in,” I said, “and take it easy right now. You’ve just come across your brother, for God’s sake. Take a step back on this. Nobody is staking anybody.”

“You sure about that, kid?” Connor said, looking around for something readily available.

“I’m not sure of anything right now,” I said, “but look at it this way… Nobody seems like they want to feed on us. That’s a step in a positive direction, I suppose.”

Brandon clapped Connor hard on the shoulder, and then helped himself to one of the now-empty chairs in the circle. “You should listen to your partner,” Brandon said.

“Why would you do this to my brother?” Connor asked, the pain on his face killing me. “Why make him one of your kind? Why are you here?”

I could tell by the look on Brandon’s face that he was trying to keep his patience with Connor. “The reason that we’re here,” Brandon said, “is that we are vampire… We’ve always been here.”

I thought of the giant white erase board that hung over the main bull pen of the D.E.A. offices, recording the days since any of the divisions had to deal with vampires. “According to our records,” I said, “your people have kind of gone off the grid for the past two years or so.”